


live another life

by vesperics



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fanart, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29431227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vesperics/pseuds/vesperics
Summary: The silver knife was cursed. It takes a year for her to work out.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 17
Kudos: 131





	live another life

**Author's Note:**

> TW // illness
> 
> I’ll put the same caution here as I did when I shared this on Twitter: this one-shot is really angsty and then it isn’t. It’s also kind of completely nonsensical but I like happy endings, so. Happy Valentine’s Day. <3
> 
> HUGE thank you to everyone on Twitter who read this over and offered me their feedback: Ale (@aykam99), Steff (@lwaayys), Brit (@hvrmalfoy), and Magdalena (@anewcosmos). I love you all :')
> 
> Title from the song “Live Another Life” by Son Lux

**. . .**

She’s too busy to notice the little things, at first. It has to get as far as her left forearm becoming completely numb while she’s cleaning her flat before she pays attention — and even then, it takes her a while to catch up.

When she goes to pick up a book on her kitchen counter, it fumbles within her hand and unceremoniously blusters to the floor, the spine flipping open in mid-air, the pages sprawled against hardwood.

She looks at her empty hand to the hardcover several times, back and forth, trying to understand. Her fingers curl into her palm and then unfurl.

She can’t feel it. She can’t feel _them._

Her thoughts begin to churn. Sudden numbness in the arm can be a precursor to a heart attack, or something as trivial as the way she slept the night before. Or carpal tunnel. Maybe peripheral neuropathy.

She doesn’t know any diagnostic charms. Not for the first time, Hermione curses what she doesn’t yet understand.

She settles herself onto one of her stools and waits, her eyebrows drawn together and her breathing steady but uncomfortably deep. After five minutes, the numbness recedes. The episode is over.

She has no answers and no clear way to get to them, but she’s willing, this first time, to let the incident pass as a blip. For the most part.

Before she stands up, she unravels the sleeve of her jumper up to her elbow, baring the skin there — and the letters flash red on her forearm, as vivid as the day they were first carved into her skin.

**. . .**

She’s not used to remembering her dreams, but she always remembers this one:

Coarse black curls across her skin.

The smell: burnt charcoal and rosewood.

The crunch of leather, the swish of robes.

“Where’d it come from?” Bellatrix whispers. “The sword.”

“We found it — we just found it—”

“Where?” The tip of her wand is at Hermione’s throat, pushing. _“Where?”_

“Please,” Hermione croaks. She doesn’t want it again. She doesn’t think she can—

_“Crucio.”_

The pain is tripled this time. Or maybe it’s only too fierce for her to remember, and every cast is a realization anew. An understanding that she has nerves and synapses she’s not aware of under normal circumstances. That beneath Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand, Hermione can discover her body from scratch, can learn a thousand fresh ways to feel terror.

When the magic retreats, she swallows several desperate lungfuls of air, writhing against the stone floor, her limbs caught beneath Bellatrix’s. Some broken sound leaves her throat and it’s pulled between a sob and a howl.

“Hang in there, Mudblood. If you die, I’ll just move on to the blood traitor.”

 _“No,”_ Hermione says. Her voice is barely louder than the heartbeat drumming in her ears.

They are not alone in the room. She thinks she can hear Ron, thinks the cellars are shaking, pounding, but he’s not there. He’s not beside her.

Instead, it’s Bellatrix. It’s the Snatchers. It’s Lucius, it’s Narcissa, it’s Draco.

It’s Hermione’s screams, and the curl of her spine against the marble.

Bellatrix says: _“Lest you forget.”_

And then she lowers the metal to Hermione’s arm.

**. . .**

The first major wave of pain comes a week after the flash of numbness, and it comes fiercely, as brutal as the incantation Bellatrix had whispered in her ear.

She gasps, keels over where she sits at her desk. She can feel it’s epicenter, the letters throbbing like exposed nerves, and horror dawns within her like the roll of a fast-moving storm.

It’s been a year. Longer than. Surely if it was _that,_ it wouldn’t be so delayed?

But she’s good at deduction. At narrowing the possibilities down.

And with violent clarity, she knows it’s not a case of carpal tunnel.

**. . .**

She Apparates as near to the manor as she dares, then walks to where she knows the wrought-iron gates stand. They swing open before she’s even gotten close enough to reach out and touch them.

She pauses. The wards can’t be keyed for her, and there’s no one else in sight.

Logically, she knows what she’s doing is slightly reckless. She wants inside but she can’t anticipate what getting inside will do to her, and she’s come alone. No one else knows about what she’s dubbed her _condition,_ but she’s likely about to confide in someone with a Dark Mark. Before she confides in anyone else. Before Harry, before Ron, before Ginny.

She walks forward.

He’s already outside, standing on the portico, propped against a column. He watches her approach with an unwavering expression — cold, withdrawn.

She’s not sure if it’s a display of intimidation or not, but regardless, she doesn’t waver in her steps. She makes her way to the base of the short stone staircase that leads up to him and pauses, lifting her chin. “I’m looking for something,” she starts, her voice clipped. “Do you have it? Her knife?”

“Whose knife?”

“Your aunt’s.”

His eyes flash with something indiscernible, and then they narrow. “Why?”

“There’s something wrong with my arm.”

“It was just a knife.”

“Well. I want to see it.”

He seems to think for a second, and then he pushes off from the column and turns on his heel, heading towards the double-doors. “Hello to you as well, Granger.”

She realizes it’s as much of an invitation as she’s going to get, and follows him.

She expects to hit a brick wall of emotions. She’s anticipated that she might not be able to follow through, that she might have to cave and find another way, or ask Harry or Ron to coordinate it with her.

But when she steps inside the manor, she feels only a dull ache, something akin to a memory of a sensation rather than a submergence. It’s manageable.

Malfoy glances back at her like he’s expecting something else, too. He turns his head again, and keeps walking.

He leads her down several long hallways — which she notes, gratefully, seem to be nowhere near the drawing room she’s familiar with — until he pushes open a glossy oak door and reveals a study.

The room is sparse, but the intricate, floral vines of the wallpaper make it look busier than it is, the opulence of the desk at its center making the space feel as full as it would if it were completely furnished.

Malfoy pulls out one of the drawers of the desk and withdraws a roll of grey canvas. He sets it on top of the wood, pulls at a thin leather cord and lets the canvas unravel.

The knife shines in the study’s light. It’s nothing but a simple curve of metal, embedded in a coarse handle of black.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Malfoy asks, folding his arms over his chest.

“It hurts.”

He arches an eyebrow, unimpressed.

Hermione sighs. “It more than hurts. It’s numb more often than it’s not. And there are — flashes. Of pain.”

“What kind of pain?”

She ignores him and withdraws her wand, directing it at the knife. She’s studied this. She’s researched, in the time it took for her to work up the nerve to come.

She lets the incantation pass her lips: _“Nudante tenebrio.”_

A white light washes over the artifact, settles across it like a sheet of frozen rain, broken and sparkling. And then it expands. It grows outward, begins to color, bolts of black shadow working through the white. She sees the flash of runes and her heart feels like it leaps up into her throat.

Her grip on her wand falters, and the spell dissipates. There’s nothing left in the air but her own heavy breaths.

“I need to take it,” she says quietly.

Malfoy regards her dispassionately, but his eyebrows knit together.

“Fine.”

**. . .**

The truth is somehow worse when it’s spelled out for her, bare and clinical:

The silver knife was cursed. Not poisoned. It is not something to find and draw out of her blood, because it doesn’t live only there. Whatever dark magic resided in the metal is all-consuming, and Hermione’s given it enough time to take over. The words on her forearm were the gateway. Her whole body is what’s conquered.

At St. Mungo’s, she’s told that they can help a bit with the pain, with the symptoms, but nothing more. That consistent use of Pepperup and Wiggenweld will eventually garner diminishing returns. That they cannot even give her an estimate of time, they are so in the dark on what lurks within the Lestrange artifact.

Three Ministry officials go to the Manor to take the blade away. Hermione goes with them, just to see it again.

She stands on the grounds, just past the gates, and observes as the grey robes disappear into the manor and then reemerge, carrying that same dark wrap of canvas. Without realizing it, she holds onto her forearm as she watches. Her fingers squeeze and rub against the letters beneath her sleeve.

Malfoy stands on the portico of the grand house and looks at her like he can’t believe she brought the war back into his home.

**. . .**

She has some hopes. Or — had.

She’d hoped she could bring her parents back to her, eventually. Could unravel the enchantments that had been left to weigh them down for too long.

She’d hoped she could make more of a difference after the war, that she could find an arena within the Ministry that she could fight her best battles.

She’d hoped she could find something as golden as what she’d had with Ron, but something that would last. Even if it struck through her, even if it burned her up.

She doesn’t have the time to hope, anymore.

She decides that it’s the worst kind of consequence.

**. . .**

“Where _did_ you find the sword?”

Hermione feels a cold wave of panic that gives way as soon as she registers the meaning behind the words, the speaker. Sometimes it’s like that. Moments where she loses all sense of where she is and her mind drifts back to charcoal and leather.

“Oh.” She clears her throat. “Harry found it. At the bottom of a pond, frozen over. In the Forest of Dean.”

Malfoy’s brow furrows, and his expression slips, as if he’s retreating into deep thought.

He had shown up ten minutes ago at the door to her flat and she had been too tired to ask him how he found her, or why he was there. Part of her still expects him to ask her to get the knife back, but he hasn’t broached the subject yet.

He’s just stared at her. He’s just asked other questions, like he’s piecing together a puzzle that’s been left unfinished on a coffee table for months.

“I couldn’t tell her that,” she continues with a shrug. “I — I guess I could’ve. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Sounds too much like a lie.”

He frowns.

“Your friends know?”

“Yes.”

“How’d they react?”

Hermione grimaces. Her thoughts stretch back to Harry and Ron’s expression, and it’s something she’s been working on forgetting. On looking past. “Fine, I guess. As well as they could.”

The burst of pain is only a faint reverberation of what she’s growing used to, but it catches her off guard all the same. She flinches, and instinctively, her right arm darts to her left forearm, wraps around the muscle there, squeezes, as if it could stopper the sensation.

She looks up at Malfoy. His eyes are cold and sharp and pale and a thousand other things she can’t name.

“You’re not dying, Granger.”

Hermione’s not sure if she’s speaking to him when she says, “I think I am.”

**. . .**

The first time she collapses, she’s alone. Fades in and out of consciousness several times before she comes to soldily, looking up at the ceiling of her flat while the echo of pain throbs up her arm, across her sternum, down her spine.

“Oh,” she says to the empty room, and then another wave sweeps across her. A phenomena so unwelcome and strange she sees spots in her vision, and her fingers and toes begin to twitch.

She doesn’t manage to get up on her own, and she doesn’t have her wand on her. She has to wait until Ginny comes — which means an hour of laying useless on her back while the aftershocks wrack through each and every limb.

Ginny opens the door and then she’s on the floor next to her, she’s talking so quickly Hermione can barely make out the words.

“—Hermione—are you—how did this— _look at me—”_

Hermione blinks and Ginny’s face crystallizes in her vision, pale and freckled and flushed with worry.

“I’m OK,” she manages to say, and lets Ginny help her up into a sitting position.

“You’re not,” Ginny responds, there’s so much heartache there, so much disaster, her voice cracks with it. She holds tight to Hermione’s shoulder and shakes her a little, like she’s so frustrated with the situation she wants to rattle the magic out of her bones. “We need — _Hermione_ — we need a better system.”

**. . .**

The second time she collapses, it’s Malfoy who finds her.

All she’d wanted was to get her own coffee. It’s only a two-block walk away from her flat. Fresh air is supposed to be _good_ for her.

She takes a shortcut between two brick buildings and starts to spasm halfway through.

Then she’s on concrete, and there’s pain from both the curse and the impact where her shoulder met the ground. She remembers how to breathe after a few long, distressing moments, and the air jounces within her chest, it shakes out through every limb.

_Crack._

“Granger.”

She hears the faint swish of robes, and then hands are hooking underneath her arms and she’s being lifted cleanly from the ground.

It’s an awkward fumble, getting her on her feet. Malfoy holds her perpendicular to the concrete and when she immediately begins to reel back, his grip shifts. Maneuvers her so that she can lean against his side to stay upright. She feels a sharp flare of shame within her gut.

“We’re going to walk,” he says matter-of-factly, and then his arm moves to her waist, his hand fluttering against her ribs. He takes one step, and she manages to mirror it, bolstered both by his grip and his own momentum.

“Where are we going?”

“Can you Side-Along?”

_“Where are we going?”_

He huffs. “St. Mungo’s.”

She jerks in his grip, fighting it. _“Stop._ There’s nothing they can help me with.”

He lets her go. She slumps immediately, sliding against the wall beside them, the edges of the bricks digging into her back and stopping her fall. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and then asks, “How’d you find me?”

“Your friends included me in their system.”

Her eyes fly open. _“Why?”_

“Because I asked them to.”

It was something Harry and Ginny came up with together. A charm linked to her Patronus, to that ineffable glow of a protector within her own magic. Something that could send out an alarm when necessary, so that she wouldn’t need someone hovering over her at all times. Harry, Ginny, and Ron’s wands vibrated when her pain stretched past a certain threshold.

And Malfoy’s, too, apparently.

“I only wanted to see the knife,” she says lowly. “I didn’t ask for you to care.”

He looks at her and his eyes widen, his posture goes rigid. It’s like he becomes a snapshot, frozen in place.

“Yeah,” he says finally. A strange syllable that rolls from his mouth like a chunk of snow splintering off from a mountain, like the beginning of an avalanche. Quiet and dreadful.

“Can you Side-Along me home?” she asks. It will hurt, but she’s not about to ask him to carry her.

“Yes,” he says, and then reaches out for her again.

**. . .**

She had hopes.

In the dark, she surveys them. Flips through the list in her mind.

She pulls her bedsheets up, tucks them around her shoulders, and wishes for something she can still touch.

**. . .**

“You were going to die,” she whispers to Harry.

She’s been near-bedbound for a week. She can get up for two short walks a day. She can take care of her personal hygiene. Beyond these things, she’s useless. Hopeless. She’s asleep more than she’s awake. She has no appetite for anything but the occasional cup of applesauce, sometimes oats or nuts or a small piece of dark chocolate. Casting something as simple as a _Lumos_ sends her body into tremors. And worst of all, reading more than a few lines of text triggers a furious migraine that lingers for hours.

Harry nods. He’s sitting near her feet, one of his hands resting against her shin. “Yeah — yes. I was.”

“You walked into it.”

“I did.”

She tries for a smile. Tilts her head to the side. “How’d you manage, Potter?”

“I was doing it… for something.” He looks suddenly ill, his face twisting up with discomfort and his eyes darting away from hers. “This isn’t for _anything,_ Hermione.”

Hermione lets her head fall back further, dipping into her pillows. She feels her vision start to slide out of focus and can do nothing but wait for it to right itself. Harry’s fingers tighten on her leg, and after several long moments, she says: “I think it could be for something.”

Harry steps out because he’s never been good at facing emotions head-on, and Hermione doesn’t take offense to the isolation. She can wait for him to come back. She still has that kind of time, she thinks.

She’s almost asleep when she hears footsteps again, and she opens her eyes to greet him.

But it’s not Harry who steps inside her room.

“Potter wouldn’t look at me. Did you write him out of your will or something?”

“Oh.” She closes her eyes again. “Hi.”

She feels Malfoy move closer, lingering near the edge of her bed. She waits. He says nothing. She lifts one eyelid warily, peeking.

In the cold light leaking in from her window, he looks so pale. Washed white and blue. He’s wearing Muggle-adjacent attire — a collared white shirt covered by a thin black cloak, rumpled — and he looks both wildly out of place and not, all at once.

“You’re not asking me what I’m doing here,” he observes. There’s a faint edge of concern to his voice, and Hermione wonders at how she can pick it up. She doesn’t know him enough to read things like that.

She opens her eyes fully. Fixes him with an honest stare.

“I had hopes,” she says.

Malfoy blinks at her. “OK,” he says blandly, clearly at a loss.

“I had—” She breaks off, frustrated, heat flushing across her neck. “I wanted—”

She stops herself again. She doesn’t have the words. And it’s OK. She doesn’t need them. She has enough strength to push herself up so that she’s kneeling on the bed instead of sitting. She maneuvers her knees to the edge of the mattress and wavers there, teetering only for a moment.

Malfoy watches her with a question in his eyes. He does not move.

 _I’m dying,_ she thinks, and then throws herself forward.

He stops her, like she knew he would. His hands dart forward and catch her arms, his fingers slipping past the over-large sleeves of the sleeping gown she wears and curling warm around the angle of her elbows. She lets her momentum tip her torso the rest of the way forward, his grip acting like a stanchion, a point to pivot from.

The height of the mattress has given her the vantage point to line up directly with him. Her lips meet his like she’s leaning into her reflection, like she’s pressing into a mirror. She feels the sharp intake of his breath, notes how cold it is compared to his exhale as he leans back, sliding warm across both of her cheeks.

He’s pulled back. His hands remain curled against her arms, and even as they tighten she wavers again. Wobbles against the bedsheets.

She’s not sure it’s a fall this time. It’s a shift, and then they’re both on equal footing.

Their mouths meet again and she decides that he tastes like black tea and peppermint, like fresh leaves, like the flare of heavy sunlight. That this close, he feels like the drag of toothy parchment, the hiss of a fire, like the curl and squeeze of something that slithers, he feels like something new, something vital and cold and also warm, like a wind that pushes you forward, like the press of a knife, like the gleam of an unsettled lake. Like life.

**. . .**

Hermione lives.

She lives because it wasn’t poison. She lives because it was magic, pure and alive, and the forces of the world call to each other in every language there is, in every song and every touch and every hope. She lives because something within what cursed her recognized something that happened in her room that day. She lives because it’s impossible.

She explains it twenty times over to Harry and Ron. Every evening they spend at the Leaky, they bring it up again.

“But I don’t _get it,”_ Ron says. “Blimey, ‘Mione, I’m so glad you’re — you know. Alive. And healthy. But how did it _work?”_

Hermione doesn’t know how many more ways to say it there are. Of all people, at least Harry should understand. He’s seen the ineffable nature of unhampered magic. He’s lived it.

But he looks at Ron like he agrees, then glances warily towards Malfoy, who’s joining them for the first time. Who sits by her side, across from them.

With a wry smile, she tries, “Have you heard of true love’s kiss?”

Ron promptly pantomimes throwing up. Harry’s face colors and he looks down at his hands.

Beside her, Malfoy lays his fingers against her arm, and squeezes.


End file.
